Fort Air Partnership (FAP), the organization that monitors the air local residents breathe, released local first and second quarter Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) results today. Results show air quality in and around Alberta’s Industrial Heartland during the first six months of 2017 was quite good.
Five of FAP’s air monitoring stations collects data that is used by the Government of Alberta in the calculation of a daily AQHI, which describes the level of health risk associated with an AQHI level. The higher the index level, the greater the health risks.
From January 1 to June 30, the index at those stations registered low risk readings the vast majority of the time. Lamont County had the highest percentage of low risk readings and Fort Saskatchewan had the least. However all stations were in the low risk category more than 93% of the time. Of the 20,561 monitored hours, only eight reached the AQHI high risk category. Most of these were caused by wintertime inversions.
| Risk Level (% of time in each) | |||||
| Station Name | Hours Monitored | Low | Moderate | High | Very High |
| Bruderheim | 4124 | 99.33% | 0.62% | 0.05% | 0.00% |
| Elk Island | 4065 | 98.13% | 1.85% | 0.02% | 0.00% |
| Fort Saskatchewan | 3922 | 93.32% | 6.63% | 0.05% | 0.00% |
| Gibbons | 4223 | 96.26% | 3.72% | 0.02% | 0.00% |
| Lamont County | 4227 | 99.52% | 0.43% | 0.05% | 0.00% |
Forest fires from British Columbia and elsewhere have negatively affected air quality in recent weeks. Local residents can check the forecast and daily AQHI and a live data feed on a variety of substances on our website. FAP also now posts weekly and quarterly AQHI results for its air monitoring stations.